Surprise tiger cub in intensive care at Calgary Zoo

A female tiger cub, born Tuesday at the Calgary Zoo, is being monitored round-the-clock by zoo veterinarians in intensive care. She’s not out of the woods yet, but had a reasonably good first night, zoo officials said.

Katja, a 10-year-old Siberian tiger, surprised her keepers by birthing two tiger cubs sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning. By the time the cubs were discovered by keepers in the morning, one cub had died. The other was struggling, the zoo said in a release Tuesday. “While it is generally preferable to keep hands-off and let the mothers raise their young without interference, obviously in this case with the cub in distress, that has not been possible,” said keeper Tim Sinclair-Smith.

Katja, one of the zoo’s four Siberian tigers, showed no outward signs of pregnancy. The cub was born to her mom after the zoo brought 9-year-old male tiger Baikal to Calgary from New York’s Bronx Zoo to mate with the tiger.

Census estimates show there are fewer than 400 adult or sub-adult Siberian tigers left in the wild, making Katja and Baikal genetically valuable in the captive population.

The unexpected birth comes less than three months after a scathing report showed human error was involved in a high number of animal deaths at the Calgary Zoo. The zoo immediately pledged to address the concerns.

Critics say the surprise pregnancy highlights some of the ongoing issues at the zoo.

“This is exactly the kind of thing they were criticized for,” said Zoocheck’s Julie Woodyer.